Advertisers are increasingly interested in improving the distribution of advertisements and/or marketing content to a target audience, i.e., persons or specific classes of persons, believed to have an above-average interest in a certain topic, product category, or brand. In addition, advertisers are increasingly interested in distributing advertisements and/or marketing content to a clearly defined geographic area, e.g., in local stores, to test and measure the impact of specific marketing initiatives. Such targeted or personalized advertising helps reduce the problem of waste coverage for advertisers. Reducing waste coverage is desirable because it helps reduce advertising costs by reducing ad coverage reaching people who are not potential buyers or users. With targeted advertising, advertisers may also want to measure how many people watch an advertisement and/or how long individuals watch an advertisement to gain more transparency on the relationship between the advertising effort and the success or failure of the advertising effort.
One way to improve targeted advertising involves collecting and using information regarding different groups of people, e.g., information about the interests of individuals. Such information may be gained through market research. The classification or grouping of individuals based on one or more characteristics of the individuals (e.g., purchasing power, interests, past purchase history, etc.) facilitates the ability to predict future purchasing actions by these individuals. Such classifications can be used to select personalized advertising for an individual.
There are many different means for presenting advertisements to customers. In recent years, fuel dispensers have evolved into technically advanced point of sale (POS) devices, which in some cases may be configured to deliver advertisements to consumers. Such advertisements are useful for marketing goods sold in the convenience store associated with the gas station, marketing technical services provided by the gas station, and/or delivering advertisements and marketing content of third party advertisers. Examples of pumps systems are described in U.S. Patent Publication 2005/0127796 A1 titled “Audio/Video Display Equipment for Gas Pumps,” which is hereby incorporated in its entirety. Advertising at fuel dispensers offers a significant advantage compared to other digital out-of-home advertising, at least in part because of the higher probability of undivided attention for the displayed content during the “idle” time of the customer while the vehicle refuels.
Currently, point of sale terminals, such as fuel dispensers, provide general advertisements and/or advertisements specific to the products and/or services of the store associated with the point of sale terminal. To reduce waste coverage and/or advertising costs, it is desirable to provide targeted or personalized advertising at such point of sale terminals.